Ice cubes as toes and other such treats

If I close my eyes I could well imagine that the scorching heat on my back is the sun and not from the cranked up radiator I'm leaning against with all my body weight and will (caveat obviously of when would I ever lie in the sun to the point of scorching but you know, whatever...) It is FUCKING freezing here and well, snowing. Yes, that's right. Snowing. I didn't order snow, certainly not with two sleeps to go before flying back to Sydney. If it comes to it I will shovel snow from the runway personally to ensure we depart this godforsaken icebox on Friday.

It's been a lovely couple of weeks, mitigated by hellish trips to central London for Christmas shopping.....

Mumma knows best

It's been a funny few days - misery has been digging my company big time but I've been trying not to let doomed job prospects and a rising tide of panic about what on earth I'm going to do next year overwhelm me every day. I've also been trying not to passively aggressively punish LB for having a job and a life and friends and oh well, everything that I don't have in London. I don't know what I did to deserve such a patient, supportive, understanding man. Survive all those stupid other boys maybe?...

All I want for Christmas is a job

Holy shit it is December already. Again. Head fuck of huge proportions. 17 more sleeps and then it is home, home, home baby. Hello Bondi.

Feeling a bit despondent at the moment. Tired, beyond bored with the fact that it is pitch dark by 4.30pm and so over the novelty of single digit temperatures - two is only a fun number when it comes dressed as a pair of shoes.

So, the countdown is on and the days are ticking over and I am distracting myself with exercise (if I have to be a freckly bi-atch I'm going to be a skinny freckly bi-atch...), making Christmas cards and cake and when I'm not doing any of that I'm looking for jobs. I applied for a freelance job last week, which I was summarily not invited to interview for today and have been disconsolate and miserable since. Methinks this job nonsense is not going to be easy.

Stinging from the impersonal rejection that is a group email, I went to work at the bar tonight only to have this loathsome piggy man get into the most irritating conversation with me about how contemporary art is bullshit and the art world is fucked. Damien Hirst this and Tracy Emin that and my god - piles of bricks in the Tate Modern (thank you Carl Andre) and blah blah blah tax payers money and crap sculptures made out of towel rails and referee whistles. I wanted to kill myself. Or him maybe. But defending the right of the insane and the arrogant and the obtusely brilliant to create crazy works of art was the last thing I felt like doing after being rejected by the very same art world I'd just applied to for a job. Arrogant tosser.

Art and I have made up though. My double date last week was just lovely. Instead of Turner the prize we ended up seeing Turner the painter at the Tate Britain. Nothing contemporary about it but it was a fascinating history lesson and an insight into the workings of The Establishment and it was rather fantastic to go from a show that focused heavily on the influence of the Royal Academy as the measure of artistic success to another show at the same Royal Academy. A show that featured, no less, a life-size working cannon that systematically shot 20kg 'pellets' of waxy red paint every 20 minutes against the walls of this very 'establishment'. Fucking genius.


I loved the Anish Kapoor exhibition. It was playful and provocative and all about texture and surface and the negotiation and perception of space. As for the cannon, it was terrifying and loud and violent and brutal in it's beauty. I still jump a little when I think about it. I also adored this sculpture in the courtyard:


Called Tall Tree and the Eye (2009) it was, despite its obvious density, the most beautiful, ephemeral sculpture - like bubbles floating towards an invisible surface. And god bless a fleeting blue sky against which to appreciate it....

The weather was pure misery over the weekend - when it wasn't bucketing down with rain it was bitingly cold and grey, grey, grey. Blurgh. Blurgh. Blurgh.


On Saturday, invigorated by my art reunion three days earlier, LB and I set off for another artistic encounter, this time in the dire backwoods of Elephant and Castle. Lured by the promise of a late lunch at Borough Market, we first went to see Roger Hiorns' installation Seizure, the work that got him nominated for this year's Turner Prize. Located in an abandoned, listed-for-demolition council estate flat, Hiorns sealed the flat before pumping 75,000L of hot copper sulfate solution into the apartment and leaving it to cool over several weeks. He then drained it and what remained was this strange and rather beautiful blue crystal 'cave':


As LB reflected afterwards, it doesn't make me think, but I like it. I think he's right. If I wanted to get all art pretentious I have no doubt I could comfortably come up with some sort of theory behind it's meaning but mostly, I just love that organisations like Artangel are facilitating encounters like this in alternative environments and reinvigorating ideas of art, space, reception and value. Hiorns' work sadly will be demolished when the building is, but I suspect that's part of it's 'meaning'.


Analysis thus complete, we then meandered in the direction of Borough, with hot chocolates to warm our frozen paws. Chorizo sandwiches and haloumi burgers on board, I then spent the afternoon wrapped up in the duvet having an epic nanna nap before dinner and cocktails and cheesy 80s music with a school friend and her boy. Was a solid Saturday really and I would have stayed in bed all day Sunday if I hadn't had to work in the evening. Am a proper bar wench this week (two undergraduate degrees, a pending Masters degrees and four considerable years of employment and all I foresee for the coming months is beers and temp work. Fabulous...) but at least it will help the time pass between now and my reunion with Bondi.

Kissing and making up

I'm off to see the Turner Prize tomorrow at the Tate Britain before a date with Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy. I'm looking forward to it, especially Anish, but I'm also, strangely, a little bit nervous.

I dunno, but I suspect it will feel like one of those awkward first encounters post-squabble with a good friend, the ones you just have to get through and then everything will be alright again. I mean let's be honest, art and I haven't had much to do with each other for nearly a month now and when I haven't been avoiding it I've said some rather rude and disparaging things about it in the weeks since school ended. I'm hoping it will be fine.

The last couple of days I've been interning and whiling away the hours endlessly googling everything from beef stroganoff recipes to long range weather forecasts for Sydney (23 days and about... oh.... 15 hours until 24 hours of economy hell and then... HOME. Yeehah!) I've also been looking for all and anything by way of remunerated activity for next year. A rental agreement and a lovely LB should not be my only reasons for returning to Ye Olde Land of Crappe Weather.


It rained most of the weekend. Funnily enough it always seems to rain whenever LB and I decide to visit Portobello Rd - dinner with Mamma: thunder, lightning, huge puddles. Dinner with lovely friends from home: pouring rain, enormous puddles, ruined shoes and hair. Aimless market wandering with vague hope of Christmas present inspiration: rain, rain, rain, some cold wind, some decent puddles and a solid hour in the pub.

LB did purchase me a gorgeous framed photograph though - a 'just because' present - and it now has pride of place on the wall. Makes me yearn for the day when I can afford to fill my house with beautiful art. Assuming we make up tomorrow of course.

Narcolepsy and a bowl of zucchini soup

It's been a while between posts - vast stretches of unpenetrated flatness on the emotional landscape that is my life post-dissertation and pre-whatever happens next. Mostly I have just been sleeping a lot.

Yesterday I started back at the art consultancy, where I'm interning two days a week until Christmas. I would be lying if I said I was excited about it (see: exhaustion) and getting home yesterday I sat on the couch and had myself a little cry. Not because I'm tired but because I feel a little bit lost and a whole lot muddled. Everytime I contemplate reading anything more taxing than Grazia, or attempt to find the will to see any one of the brilliant exhibitions on in London at the moment - oh Sophie Calle, oh Anish Kapoor - well, my narcoleptic tendencies prevail and instead I nap.

Welcome back coat.

It's 4.50pm here, it's 7 degrees, day three of The Coat and it's been dark for the last half hour.

Explain to me again why I live here voluntarily?

The Buda and The Pest

So Budapest was lots of fun. We got back yesterday afternoon after a couple of days wandering the city and trying not to freeze to death. Winter comes early to Eastern Europe people...


I was talking to my sister today, who has been to Budapest before - and she asked, had we been to the Museum of Terror? Umm. Nope. Did we get to the Communist Sculpture Park? Umm. No. What the hell did we do? A not unreasonable question I suppose and the answer is, well, not a huge amount, but enough, and it was good.

We were meant to arrive on Sunday lunchtime, thus the arse o'clock arrival at Heathrow for an 8.30am flight, but engine troubles before we'd even taxied to the runway left us stranded on the tarmac for a couple of hours until we were bussed unceremoniously to another plane. A few fellow passengers were muttering about compensation and impending stroppy letters but given the choice I think I'd rather send a thank you note for pre-emptively saving my life... but that's just me.

Arriving in Budapest, to be flummoxed by the new currency - I still have no idea how much those two days cost me - we caught a taxi into the city, Oliver speaking the international language of football with the taxi driver, whose English was limited to "Cesc Fabregas, oh yes", "Van Persie, oh yes" "Arshavin, yes, yes". Thank god he wasn't a Chelsea fan or we might never have got there.


Arriving at the apartment Ol's friend Anna-Lou had booked us all, and who was joining us on our mini-adventure, we were all completely buggered and there was a unanimous vote for snooze over sights before we ventured out in search of goulash for dinner.

Goulash ticked we had a reasonably early night and a very late morning before rugging up against the cold and taking to a bus tour. A) because we couldn't find the walking tour B) because it seemed an easy way to cover all the major landmarks with a minimum effort output and C) because it was frigging cold.


I'm not sure if it was the weather (depressing, despite the sunshine) or the exhaustion or just a generally dazed sense of "huh" that has been following me like an errant piece of toilet paper stuck unwittingly to my shoe since school ended, but I'm still not sure what I think of Budapest. It certainly has moments of great beauty and the Danube, which runs the gauntlet between such stunning buildings as the neo-gothic houses of parliament and the castle on the hill in Buda, is certainly amazing. But I don't know. For a city, and a country, that has such a fascinating history, it just seemed to lack the energy of other cities, like Berlin. But then maybe that was me missing the energy... Afternoon naps anyone? I would go back, but I'd want to go in Summer.


The bus trip though was great - informative, interesting and when it stopped at the Citadel for 20 minutes we had the opportunity to partake in some serious hot chocolate action. Think liquid chocolate doused in whipped cream. Low-cal it was not. Necessary it was.

That night we took advantage of the inclusive boat trip and more hot chocolate on board, we cruised the Danube trying not to freeze while gazing at the seriously beautiful architecture. You do have to love the English language translation on the commentaries though. "This beautiful bridge is very popular with people who try to kill themselves by jumping off." Cheery, no?


The next day, after the purchasing of some serious leg warmers to wear under my jeans and some obligatory jazz hands, we headed up to the castle to take in the view.


Broken record muchly but FUCK it was cold up there. Beautiful, but windy and biting and c-o-l-d. Every time we stopped for lunch I had to kick off my shoes, cross my legs and tuck my toes into the nooks of my knees to offset the stinging.

That afternoon the boys and Anna-Lou took off for the thermal spas. In a moment of absolute stupidity I forgot to pack my swimmers and what with being unemployed and already the owner of six pairs of swimming costumes, I refused to fork out 70 bucks for the privilege of cooking in a thermal spring with lots of chubby old Eastern European men wearing less lyrca than me. So I had a nap and the rest of Team Budapest, as big little bro had dubbed us, went off for a couple of hours.


That night we splashed out on a delicious last dinner - cocktails included - and a last dish of goulash before heading back to London yesterday. It's been such fun having the bro's here and their company and the absolute bullshit they talk has made me deeply homesick. Not quite six weeks until LB and I are Sydney-bound and I can't wait.

Schooooooool's out. Forever.

I think I've lost my writing mojo. I know where I left it - somewhere in the 94 pages of earnest intellectual ramblings that I handed in five days ago. I'm struggling to write a basic grocery list at the moment... which would explain the lack of food in my house but not the piles of washing or layers of dust that I've accumulated in the past weeks.